


where you are (i will be)

by kadma



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Canon Compliant, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-16 13:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11829495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadma/pseuds/kadma
Summary: Every step Celestia takes forward, Kyouko takes backwards.Written forRare Pair Fest 2017.





	where you are (i will be)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TereziMakara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TereziMakara/gifts).



The whole notion is never as romantic as it's supposed to be.

Though they're star-crossed lovers who kiss when they meet, who fly through the stars behind each other's eyes and tighten each other’s bodices afterwards, it hurts. So every time it ends, she tries to forget.

Taeko Yasuhiro begins on her mottled white Hokkaido, trekking through the countryside with her scratchy skirt bunched around her calves. The lilac maiden arrives in leather, thicker and darker than she has ever seen on the farm's vast drying racks. She falls in love near instantly, too naive to know the meaning of the word, too unworldly not to whisper it over and over as she's kissed to completion. It’s not right at the time, and it’s never right — it’s a temporary burst of colour in a grey world, a rainbow that dies a monochromatic death. It's futile to fight. The mysterious girl helps re-apply her rouge after kissing it off, all the while looking at her like she's made of something unreal, like she's a faery or ghost who will vanish if she turns away.

She never says more than she needs to. She doesn’t leave her name until it’s too late.

"In due time, you are Celestia Ludenberg," she says, as they fall asleep in each others arms, and Celestia she becomes.

Celestia is forever city bound. Sometimes, they meet on empty stations where the trains have been abandoned, where the wind wrecks havoc with her hair no matter its length, and together, they make their way towards the skyscrapers and sweating crowds. Surrounded on all sides by humanity, they try to suck the life of the masses. They’re both empty. It works out just fine.

The next time, she finds herself armed with future knowledge. Kyouko's hair is loose and wild, pooling around her shoulders like a fan made of rare bird feathers; she's caught in the sliver of sleep and waking. Kyouko is the one in an archaic dress now, flaxen and torn, her hands covered in two rough cloths.

At their first touch, she thinks Kyouko's left her behind in the memories of her last life. But coldness isn’t easily forgotten. The absence of flowers and letters and phone calls and conventional courtship don't mean a thing. They come back to one another. 

Large, suspicious eyes stare at Celestia, warily looking over the twin spirals coiling from her scalp. She discovers she is the one who finds the leather, who purchases the gloves that co-ordinate her black and white dresses perfectly. Kyouko's eyes are a sharp lilac. Not blue-but-changed in the light. Not a silvery sheen or false coloring — just a surreal shade of purple. What Celestia achieves with custom-made contact lenses, Kyouko contains in herself entirely truthfully. To remember such a minute detail about someone like her, it's not like her. Lilac is Kyouko's destiny, so Celestia purchases the clothes she has already seen. Kyouko reaches out, clutching Celestia to her chest like she's a goddess. It's fascinating.

Another time, her hands are covered in dish soap and submerged in water that looks like a diluted swamp. 

"Oh," is all Kyouko says, hands around Celestia's waist, drawing her in with a rare smile, turning her so they're face to face. No cloth, no glass between them. But her skin is the covering that keeps them apart and the ache to tear it off her, all teeth and bruises, never goes away.

When they kiss, her diner-greased nails tangling in those soft locks, Kyouko's gloved fingers bringing their hips closer together, she tries to keep her eyes open. Lilac, remember. Her eyes, they have to be lilac. But she pinches Celestia's side and she slaps Kyouko with the back of her hand, stained red by spaghetti sauce, and they return to kissing. Black is all they see behind their lids.

There are two constants. Her lover's name remains the same. It's a coy victory; every time, she introduces herself as Celestia, her face poker-ready and searching for the flicker of recognition that isn't coming. And Kyouko's hands are covered, always; silk, rubber, leather. Celestia promises when the time is right, she will ask about it.

She never gets the chance.

There is one occasion where they happen together, their timelines aligned so beautifully as to demand the presence of a tragedy, too. Kyouko wears the jacket, Celestia, the frills. Celestia acts flippant, angry, screaming at that oversized buffoon Yamada and cursing her luck at having to stay silent. Kirigiri doesn’t seem to notice her, too focused on solving the mystery of this imprisonment. But once, just once, she looks at her hard. Across the room with the faces of the dead staring back, the girl who is now a detective, she stares at Celestia with such conviction that Celestia knows she has made a deadly mistake.

She lies her way through this life, through all her lives. She spins too-beautiful truths out of a golden thread, and clothes herself in their brilliance. She doesn’t have a heart or a sprinkling of mercy to go with it. She can't sacrifice herself. Not even in the name of the greater good.

But she is not the only one who flits and flies between times. Every step she takes forward, Kyouko takes backwards. 

Celestia looks at Kyouko and sees how they share the knowledge of their past and future in sparse bursts, their complex intimacy a symptom of their fear, of their displacement, of nothing being true and present except the thudding of their hearts as once. But with those lilac eyes, all Kyouko sees is Celestia's graceful guilt.

In this trembling moment, Kyouko's only mistress is the truth. It isn't much to give, but Celestia slowly strokes those leather-clad fingers one more time. Her lips are dry and naked. She releases her last secret.

"I'm unafraid," she murmurs, and it's a frightening truth. Kyouko's face is expressionless. "I'm unafraid of you."

It turns out that she, Celestia Ludenberg, will die first.


End file.
